Obama Picks Tech Guru Genachowski For Transition Team

Recruitment of the attorney-technocrat is consistent with Obama's stated goal of having technology play a key role in his administration.

President-elect Barack Obama has added technology maven Julius Genachowski as a key member of his transition team, instantly creating speculation that technology will play an important role in the new administration.

Obama has expressed strong support for spreading technology, and even for creating a Cabinet-level chief technology officer position. Genachowski's appointment ensures that he'll have the president-elect's ear on key technology issues. The two men have known each other since their days as students at Harvard Law School.

And, as a former legal counsel to ex-FCC chairman Reed Hundt, Genachowski could be in line for consideration as chairman of the FCC itself. He also clerked for Supreme Court Justice David Souter and, before that, for retired Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, according to his biography.

Recently, Genachowski has been less of a Washington wonk and more of a business entrepreneur. He's served on the boards of Expedia, Hotels.com, and Ticketmaster. His longest business stretch covered eight years in senior executive positions at Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp.

With one foot in the Washington scene and another in the business world, Genachowski could be tapped for any of a wide variety of positions in the Obama administration once his role on the transition team is complete.

Cost, time, and risk. It's the demand trifecta vying for the attention of both technology professionals and attorneys charged with balancing the expectations of their clients and business units with the hard reality of the current financial and regulatory climate. Sometimes, organizations assume high levels of risk as a result of their inability to meet the costs involved in data protection. In other instances, it's time that's of the essence, as with a data breach.

As InformationWeek Government readers were busy firming up their fiscal year 2015 budgets, we asked them to rate more than 30 IT initiatives in terms of importance and current leadership focus. No surprise, among more than 30 options, security is No. 1. After that, things get less predictable.